The other day, someone was explaining the psychology of Paul and his fellow Byrne-bots to me with this wonderful post by Mike O. at the John Byrne Forum.

A few years back, Mike O. said his life was so pathetic that he was going to kill himself. He was fat and stupid, no job worth mentioning, no friends, no family.

Then the new DOOM PATROL by Byrne came out.

He finally had a reason to live!

(I wonder what he did when it was canceled?)


Mike O.: "I swear to fricking Christ, it's the only thing keeping me from killing myself right now.

You know... what the hell... we're all alone - there's no such things as friends, family is a sham and a joke. Why do we even fricking bother? Inertia, mostly. We struggle through each day, pain, suffering... screw this crap. Why the hell do we bother?? I get my only comfort in life from a fricking comic book. My job is crap, my life is crap... I've wasted my whole god-damned life... look - any youngsters who happen upon this? Screw college. It's a waste of time and money. I'm going to die in debt so I could get a useless piece of paper. What is there? Food? Cake? Whatever?? I mean, I can't even eat myself happy at this point. MacBeth was right - it's all sound and fury, and it signifies a big fat wet fart. It's all for nothing. Where will I be in 100 years? I won't even be a bad memory. I'm fat. I'm ugly. I'm lonely. I have no friends. I have no family. When you look back on it? How many good times were there? A few? At best? And that's supposed to make it all worthwhile?? What is life, a god-damned Steven Speilberg movie?? I hate it all, it's all crap, it's all worthless..

finally... when all is said and done, my only joy in life, the only thing that snapped me out of it today... was reading the new Doom Patrol. So, thanks, JB, once again.. for making it mean something... You're one of the good ones, JB. You're a light in the darkness. You're a good guy, JB. Were always nice to me. Answered all my questions. made me feel like I was ok. Thanks, jb."

Gah!

That... what? Jesus, guy. Don't get me wrong, I hope he picked himself out of that funk. But holy shit. If the only thing keeping you alive is seeing what Grunt and Nudge are up to this month, you need to seek immediate fucking medical attention.

Ordinarily I wouldn't encourage someone on the verge of suicide to go ahead with it, but if the only thing keeping you alive is John Byrne comics ...

Saved this up during your hiatus, did you?

Yet another complete & utter waste of time by you (& someone) to get all psychological via someone's Internet ramblings.

-----
Oh & Ceci, once again you miss the obvious...

My point was NOT that JB's storytelling abilities are automatically good. As usual you twist things to support your own negative agenda, but that's to be expected, so no biggie.

Since you're going to pretend to miss the point, I'll say this...

JB knows what's he doing & the story element regarding the comic book publisher was put into question, but in the context of the story (from Danny's naive perspective) it DOES make sense. Ergo, it was "realistic".

This should now be followed by more supposition, hypothesis & bottom-line fantasy to move the spotlight away from the subject at hand.

Hi Kreskin!

Wow...

I MIGHT be a drop less repulsed if the guy had said the only thing keeping him alive were Byrne's Fantastic Four comics. Byrne's Doom Patrol though? Ugh! That's like saying the tenth season of Happy Days was the only thing keeping me going!

Isn't this O'Brien guy the militant black guy with the shrine to Obama in his house? I guess he's living in a new golden age now.

Regardless of the subtleties surrounding Byrne's use of quotation marks, Byrne's initial response is to claim that the guy had never read Next Men. When the Bob Walsh clearly proves that he did, Byrne throws a hissy fit that serves really only to embarrass himself and expose how ill-prepared he was for this guy to respond to his response.

Really, Byrne... crying "Boring" over and over? Bad form, Old Man.

Har!

"The despair, the loneliness! I can't bear to go on! And yet -- I must know if Joanie really does love Chachi!"

Once again, it's a waste of time to psychoanalyze someone's internet posts. Keep close track folks, this goes back and forth at Paul's whims.

In this case, when somebody says they want to kill themselves, it's ridiculous to think they've got problems.



Your stated reason for thinking Byrne knows what he's doing when it comes to comic book storytelling was that John Byrne has a knack for comic book storytelling.

If you don't mean to use logical fallacies, stop using them.



1) The story is not told from Danny's naive perspective. It's told from in omniscient 3rd person. So we're not seeing Danny's skewed perspective, we're seeing what's actually supposed to be happening in the story.

Mind you, a story about a naive character buying the ridiculous tropes of a superhero story, while the reader is aware that it's only the character's naivete that's holding the narrative together, would be an interesting story to read. But it's not one that Byrne has the chops to pull off. If only because when writers identify the ridiculous tropes of superhero comics, it has a tendency to get Byrne's dander up.

2) Since the events of nigh-on every comic are accepted as realistic by the characters in that story, does that make nigh-on every comic story "realistic?" If so, we're back to the meaningless of Byrne attempting to take a "shot at 'realistic' superheroes." It's not like all his previous characters walked around saying stuff like, "The Power Cosmic? That sounds like some grade-A bullshit."



As always, feel free to point to any supposition or fantasy in my reasoning, Paul. You are always welcome to go back to that earlier four-point argument for an easily laid-out example.

As always, you are unable to do so.

Well, according to Paul.

But the only thing keeping Paul going is Byrne's STAR TREK: LEONARD MCCOY, FRONTIER DOCTOR mini-series.

Heh!

Here is Byrne, describing his Dr. McCoy spinoff project.

JB: It's set between the end of the original series and the beginning of the first movie. (Bones has his beard in this series!) My hope is that anyone who might be interested in what McCoy was up to in those “missing” years would pick this one up and become hooked.

I like Trek as much as the next guy, but I've never wondered what McCoy was up to in those "missing" years. Other than Byrne, did anyone care?

OK. Just checked. The Beat says about 6,000 people are buying it. Ouch!